Category: 10″

The canon of popular music is a thick and robust map of nascent islands and ancient territories. Among them is a land inhabited by the unconscious bass grooves of E.S.G. and the twisted innocence of Beat Happening and the Raincoats; Moss Lime run an eclectic thrift store on its outermost borders. Zoo du Quebec is a furtive tidal wave of immediacy and joy. We’re living through a time when vocals are auto-tuned to Adele-ish heights, or stripped of any intimacy by the fog of reverb; singer Hélène Barbier offers glorious contrast. Her dry and dadaist storytelling, sounds like a new friend quietly letting you know, over the din of a packed and sweaty bar, that there’s a quiet, late-night cafe around the corner, and it has the best veggie poutine in town; Moss Lime takes your hand, walks you out of the bar, and guides you far from the fray.

A herald abdicates his duties to become a harbinger. He gives an exit speech of honest introspection and narrates his inner conflicts to the hearkening convergence of the rank and file. His oratory is tonally commanding and it’s mastered with a silver tongue. People discern the vocalized afflictions. It is sheathed like a cupped mic to make a bull horned public address of incurable conditions.

On his most recent blow job, sax man Brodie West takes his easygoing solarium-jazz ensemble, Eucalyptus, away from the tropical lounges they previously haunted to smokier speakeasies. Here, the septet gives the arrangements more freedom to nod and sway away under the dim lights of table candles. This whirl-around feels slightly sad, as if the night is almost over and the music knows it. It reluctantly unwinds itself while it’s still dark, before the sun comes up and the basement-bar’s patrons have to face the day.

Huckleberry Friends continue wayfaring through the mystic burial grounds of druidic psych. Drones of timbre, pulsing æther, and ceremonial groove permeate their latest 10″, pushing the coven of femme-pop conjuring into heights of lysergic divinity. The EP is delicately packaged in a textured black triple gatefold complete with ephemera, clear bronze vinyl, and a download. Listen at full stone.

I want to live Precious Necklace. I want tight sweaters. VIP access to the clurb. Double martinis. False love. Teen soundtracks blasting. I want the whole world in a song and I want to dance; pulsing drum machines, echoey vocals and exaggerated pop-harmonies. Let the music take you back in time. Nintendo, cocaine, plastic people, and radio hits. Sex in bathrooms and parental neglect. Stereotypes. We’ve lost our youth. We can take it back. The Silly Kissers, in a futuristic act of heroism, are our only hope. Their fourth and most realized effort to-date showcases their perfected 80s-pop ventriloquism. Precious Necklace is a re-imagining that only nostalgia can deliver; glossing over the weaknesses of an era we will never truly understand and manipulating the pearls of its bounty to deliver every genre’s saving grace: synthetic pop perfection. Precious Necklace, released as a limited-edition 10″ on Montreal’s Arbutus Records, is a 10/10 major-scale heart-melt. The world has never needed so much. They will deliver. GRIP. IT. NOW.